Thursday, December 18, 2014

Another gym PR

I had a decent night at CrossFit last night.  I have been quite literally stalled on the clean and jerk at CrossFit for years.  I had gotten my clean to 190 pounds in October of 2012.  My clean and jerk was stuck at 180 or 185 for years.

Recently, I got a few new PRs.  I got a new squat clean PR with 195 pounds last week.  I got to 188 pounds on the clean and jerk, using a push jerk rather than split jerk.  Last night, our goal was to get as heavy as possible for the split jerk, which in theory, should be a stronger lift than the push jerk.  My existing PR for this lift is (was) 185 pounds, and it was set about 2 years ago, I think.

I warmed up at 95 and 115 and 135, doing multiple reps at each weight.  At that point, I switched to singles and gradually worked my way up.  Things were easy at 145, 155 and 165.  My lift at 175 went reasonably well, but I struggled, as I always do, with trying to drop quickly under a heavy bar.  But, I made it.

From there, I skipped over my existing PR of 185 and went for the PR at 190.  Just like at 175, I felt like I got under the bar poorly.  However, my push was fairly strong and I managed to get under the bar and catch it.  I was able to stand it up easily.

So, I've not got a squat clean of 195, a power clean of 188, a push jerk of 188 and a split jerk of 190.  Somehow, I need to take this recent progress and keep working, and get myself over 200 pounds for the clean and jerk.  That's not a lofty number by any means.  The world record for my age and weight group is about 330 pounds.  I'm pretty sure that record is safe.

I had stalled at these lifts in a big part due to a shoulder injury that dogged me for most of last year.  Now that my shoulder has been relatively healthy for more than a year, I'm seeing decent progress.

Goal number 1, of course, is to keep the shoulder healthy.  But, I would really like to see my Olympic lifts and my bench press continue to get better.

After the split jerks last night, I did some push presses, followed by some rowing, dumbbell snatches and push-ups.  Tonight will be burpees, pull-up negatives (start at the top and hold on as long as possible), box jumps and deadlifts.

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